“It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.”
“It seems wisest to assume the worst from the beginning...and let anything better come as a surprise.”
“Before all masters, necessity is the one most listened to, and who teaches the best.”
“What pen can describe this scene of marvellous horror; what pencil can portray it?”
“So is man's heart. The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of his superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.”
“All great actions return to God, from whom they are derived.”
“What a big book, captain, might be made with all that is known!"
"And what a much bigger book still with all that is not known!”
“He who is mistaken in an action which he sincerely believes to be right may be an enemy, but retains our esteem.”
“In presence of Nature's grand convulsions man is powerless.”
“Man is never perfect, nor contended.”
“Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.”
“The colonists had no library at their disposal; but the engineer was a book which was always at hand, always open at the page which one wanted, a book which answered all their questions, and which they often consulted.”
“Are we rising again?" "No. On the contrary." "Are we descending?" "Worse than that, captain! we are falling!”
“One's native land!―there should one live! there die!”
“Are we rising again?" "No. On the contrary." "Are we descending?" "Worse than that, captain! we are falling!" "For Heaven's sake heave out the ballast!" "There! the last sack is empty!" "Does the balloon rise?" "No!" "I hear a noise like the dashing of waves. The sea is below the car! It cannot be more than 500 feet from us!" "Overboard with every weight! … everything!”
“Oh!' cried Neb, 'suppose it's jam!'
'I hope not,' replied the reporter.”
“Beneath the lower point of the balloon swung a car, containing five passengers, scarcely visible in the midst of the thick vapor mingled with spray which hung over the surface of the ocean.”
“Powder is but a thing of yesterday, and war is as old as the human race--unhappily.”
“Learned, clear-headed, and practical, he fulfilled in all emergencies those three conditions which united ought to insure human success--activity of mind and body, impetuous wishes, and powerful will. He might have taken for his motto that of William of Orange in the 17th century: "I can undertake and persevere even without hope of success.”
“The once slave, though free, would not leave his master. He would have died for him. He was a man of about thirty, vigorous, active, clever, intelligent, gentle, and calm, sometimes naive, always merry, obliging, and honest. His name was Nebuchadnezzar, but he only answered to the familiar abbreviation of Neb.”
“Now, the earth occupies one of the foci of the ellipse, and so at one point in its course is at its apogee, that is, at its farthest from the sun,”
“I am induced to think," said Pencroft, "that this man was not wrecked on Tabor Island, but that in consequence of some crime he was left there.”
“In two days there won't be a single leak, and our boat will have no more water in her than there is in the stomach of a drunkard.”
“A man of action as well as a man of thought, all he did was without effort to one of his vigorous and sanguine temperament.”
“I can undertake and persevere even without hope of success.”
“Better have two strings to one’s bow than none at all!”
“Could it have passed away in electric sheets, as is sometimes the case with regard to the typhoons of the Indian Ocean?”
“Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air, above the vast watery desert of the Pacific, about four o'clock in the evening of the 23rd of March, 1865.”
“Instigated by princes equally ambitious and less sagacious and more unscrupulous than he was, the people of India were persuaded that they might successfully rise against their English rulers, who had brought them out of a state of anarchy and constant warfare and misery, and had established peace and prosperity in their country. Their ignorance and gross superstition made them the facile tools of their designing chiefs.”
“He’d left his baby brother to die alone. Tears he’d never allow anybody to see spiked his eyes like acid. He’d lived with fear, he’d lived with pain, but failure was just too much. Now, with Jory’s face in front of him, his hands shook and his vision clouded. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice raw and hoarse.”
“I loved him. God help me, I loved him more than a girl has ever loved a boy. More than anyone has ever loved anyone.”
“I shook my head once and caught her glance, the wise and sullen look of a not quite adolescent girl who knew too much.”
“No. Your thoughts are what make you. But your body isn't a meaningless thing either. Call me strange, but I think only the person you love the most should see you like that. And not here--in an ugly, dirty place--when you haven't even thought about it.”
“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”
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